DuPont Prop 1 Decision Could Cost City Services in Long Run

The city of DuPont held a town hall meeting Monday, September 17th, but it wasn’t promoting the upcoming DuPont Proposition 1 ballot initiative. The town hall meeting merely was giving the community the perspective on why six of seven council members voted in the affirmative to place the 84% DuPont property tax increase before the citizens. It wasn’t a pro-levy campaign ploy because DuPont’s mayor and council and city attorney said so.

Yeah, right.

The meeting was an awkward display of talking points seldom seen on the local level of a small, bedroom community. A mix of anger and hyperbole directed at the citizens by city leadership. There was also a good measure of guilt mixed into the Civic Center stew when Councilman Penny Coffey described the old city hall as a melange of “rats, mice, and spiders.” Working conditions were so terrible and cramped in the old City Hall that they simply had to build the Civic Center that the city is unable to pay its $1.27 Million obligation in order for city employees work without “rats, mice, and spiders” interfering.

The former “infested” city hall is now the DuPont Community Center; available for rental for toddler birthday parties and welcome home celebrations for those military families. Not good enough for city employees but good enough for whiny citizens, I suppose.

To her credit, at least Mrs. Coffey stayed on point in speaking to the Civic Center. Other councilpersons veered into the weeds to discuss fire service which could provide the requisite fear for young families and senior citizens to get out the vote. The problem with adding the retention of the three firemen hired through the federal stimulus of SAFER grants is that they do not address the long time concern of citizens. Fire calls are a small fraction of the service calls in DuPont. Most citizens are rightly concerned about medical responsiveness from the city. However, the city has an EMS levy and passes each time it is renewed.

True to form in DuPont, the subject of medical response impact was raised by Councilman Mike Courts when he boldly stated that he didn’t want to drive himself to the hospital. This type of comment is insidious because it preys on the fears of the senior citizens living throughout town, and in particular in the Patriot’s Landing assisted living development. Planting the seed of a senior laying in wait for medical response is a vision hard to combat. It is tantamount to the inability to un-ring a bell. However, Mr. Courts cannot proceed unchallenged for his assertion because it is simply not true and not part of the DuPont Prop 1 levy lid lift request.

Questions more appropriate for Mr. Courts would be why anyone in DuPont would drive themselves to the hospital when voters passed, by a 75%/25% margin no less, an EMS levy renewal in 2011? What happens to the $0.50/$1000 per assessed value monies collected? If they are not used for the city’s emergency medical services then were does that money actually go? I think city leaders would like to politely tell their levy shill to shut up because the answer may beg more questions.

This levy needed the retention of SAFER grant firemen included because the primary issue, the debt of the Civic Center, did not have a snowball’s chance of passing DuPont Proposition 1 alone. There had to be a tangible loss to the citizens more than the offices and new Police and Fire stations. After all, the city ran fine before the facility was built, at least to the eye of the citizens who were unaware of the “rats, mice, and spiders” prior to the levy request.

The other dirty secret of this DuPont Proposition 1 levy and its 84% property tax increase is that it will only maintain city services to this year’s levels. For the next seven years there is no budget wiggle room so none of the cut services will be restored. Nor is there any room to add police personal if the need arises. The elephant in the budget room is the addition of the Civic Center Debt into the city’s general fund. Once that $1.27 million obligation is inserted in the budget it becomes the third largest budget item, following fire and police service.

Goodbye parks and recreation. Goodbye business development. Any future budget shortfalls will dip further into citizen facing services and require more taxes to restore.

The debate is heating up and what citizens need are DuPont Levy Facts and not the hyperbole of a council who consider this a battle of Us vs. Them.

More pointed editorials are sure come grace the pages of the Sound Puget Sound News and the Suburban Times in the weeks to come. It would be nice if DuPont Prop 1 voters could consider the facts rather than the emotion.